Page 3 of Winter's Waltz
Max held his hand over the wounded appendage, which was throbbing, and he hopednotbroken. His eyes were watering—not tears, curse it all—and he could not have been more shocked. Oh, Miss Genevieve Winter had threatened to break his fingers and his nose. But she was awoman. No member of the fairer sex in his acquaintance had ever physically attacked a man. An outraged mistress tossing about vases and the occasional slipper or curio—hell, even a mantel clock—was perfectly understandable. A female landing a fist to a man’s nose, however, not so much.
Then again, she was a woman ostensibly garbed as a male, from her perfectly knotted cravat to her polished boots, which were far too small to belong to a man. She must have commissioned them for her measurements. He had taken note at the same time he had admired the manner in which her trousers clung to her limbs and the delightful—if slight—swell of her hips. Ordinarily, Max preferred a more voluptuous sort of female. However, there was no denying that Miss Genevieve Winter’s willowy form was as sultry as any well-endowed woman he had ever known. He would gladly bed her in the next breath if she seemed inclined.
And if he could get his dratted nose to cease aching.Christ, his fingers were slick with warm liquid, which could only be—
“Is your nose bleeding?” she asked calmly, as if she were not the reason for his current agony.
He released his nose long enough to hold his hand before him and confirm, before fishing a handkerchief from his waistcoat and pressing it to his nostrils to stop the flow. “Yes, it is.”
Although he attempted to glare at the delectable creature who had just punched him in the nose, he was not certain his attempts at sternness could be appreciated in his current state. Meanwhile, she was perched on the edge of her desk, those beautiful legs of hers dangling, sinfully outlined in her trousers.
He entertained a brief fantasy of those limbs wrapped around his waist as he plunged deep inside her before reason chased it.
“It may be broken,” she observed, crossing her legs and flattening her palms on the ledgers-and-correspondence-laden surface of her desk.
As if she had not a care.
And blast her, but he could not tear his gaze from those curvaceous limbs of hers even as he attempted to sop up the blood streaming from his right nostril. Only the right, it seemed. A promising sign? One could only hope. He had been planted a facer before, naturally. However, everyone before her had been kind enough to avoid his nose and aim instead for his jaw.
“I am certain it is unbroken,” he argued stubbornly, for this scrap of a female wasnotgoing to outdo him.
Oh no. Not today, Satan’s minion.
He had formulated his plan quite carefully. He would relieve himself of this most unwanted duty and carry on with his life. His father would forgive him for his sins, in time. This latest, regrettable scrape would fade into obscurity where it belonged. After all, the duke could cut the purse strings but he could not sever the familial ties. The heir was the heir, and the heir was…Max.
Such as he was.
Currently, stranded in an East End gambling den with a siren dressed in gentleman’s garb who had just landed a deuced smarting blow to his nose. He had thought he could charm her and avoid her. Clearly, he would have to concoct a new strategy.
“It is bleeding rather profusely,” she pointed out, with an arched, golden brow.
Not to mention nary a hint of contrition.
“Fancy word for an East End lady,” he grumbled from behind his blood-stained handkerchief. “Profusely.”
Small of him, he knew.
But the damned woman had wounded him—and doubly so. No female he had ever met hadstruckhim. Or denied him, for that matter.
She hopped down from the desk in spritely fashion. “I was about to fetch you some ice to help staunch the flow, but now you are decidedly on your own, Blunderberry.”
She had ice here? The establishment was not nearly as ramshackle as he had supposed prior to his arrival, but it hardly looked as if she would have spare ice waiting about. And surely his ears were mistaken and she had not just referred to him as—
“Suiting name, no?” She grinned, unapologetic, both for the damage she had done his poor nose and the insult she had paid his title.
An honorific was still a goddamn honorific, which was far more than this bastard, rookeries-born spawn of a cit—clad in a gentleman’s attire—could ever hope for. He ought to spank her arse for the outrage.
Bloody wonderful.
Now his cock was throbbing in tandem with his beak.
And he had also just thought of his nose as a goddamnbeak. Her word. Next, he would be saying spoony.Good God, what a horror. The word ought to be outlawed.Damnation.Was it even a word?
“Hardly suiting, Miss Winter.”
How nettling that his voice was rendered somewhat nasally by the necessity of pressing his handkerchief over the bleeding appendage which would not be named.
“You may call me Gen.” She cocked her head at him, eying him with a sweeping glance that went from head to toe. “Everyone does. Enemies included.”
